Service Design and Customer Experience that understands your customers and grows your business

We show you how to evaluate the experience your customers have of your services through your customers' eyes and to continuously improve and refine them so they are both customer-centric and competitive.

Customer Experience Design ensures that when you design your products/services with a focus on what your customers truly value, then each touchpoint is delivered in a seamless and intuitive way that your customers appreciate. It moves the idea of customer management experience from something that is accidental to being intentional.

Our unique process ensures that designing your customer experience is validated with vast amounts of data, research and insights. Then, keeping your customers at the centre of the service design and customer experience process, we create a new service model for your business, turning previous points of friction and stress into smooth customer-centric experiences.

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Two Proto Customer experience designers conducting a video meeting

Business benefits of customer experience and service design:
end-to-end transformation

Customer Experience and Service Design can focus on improving just one crucial touch-point for your customers or it can drive total business transformation.

Most businesses in their heart understand that implementing customer experience improvements will be of value in building improved business outcomes. However sometimes they can be put off by what they perceive as barriers to implementation.

Business and customers are far more complex than they ever used to be and taking a service design approach can ensure you can solve the following problems your business may be encountering.

We focus on the practical side of improving your customer service; people, policy, process, procedures and props. Change affects your business so new systems, operations, and attitudes are often required to create improved services and customer experiences.

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Two Proto experience designers working on a customer experience journey map CX - Optus Customer Pathways portfolio

Ready to transform your service experience?

Access simple easy-to-action steps that build customer focus into your business

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The Proto difference:
how we approach customer experience and service design

We use a Growth Driven Design approach developed in 2009 and continually improved upon across 100+ projects. At its simplest, it looks like this:

Proto's Growth Driven Design methodology customer experience design
Learn more about our Growth Driven Design approach

Gumtree customer experience and service design successes

Gumtree engaged Proto to discover exactly how customers experienced their offering, from first enquiry to final transaction.

Proto analysed 55 different touch-points across 6 phases of customer interaction during an extensive research period. Key pain points were identified and opportunities for improvement were discovered at every point of the user journey. Proto delivered a turnkey set of valuable solutions that drove a 25 point increase in NPS and business growth.

Two Proto Gumtree CX strategy books, one open

"From the get go we knew Damian and his team were superstars. Their enthusiasm and energy coupled with their world-class methods, cut through the noise and brought clarity to our customers voice. Understanding the value drivers enhanced the empathy we have towards our customers, which further helped us prioritise a winning formula. Enabling us to continue to build an iconic Australian brand."

Baris Ozturk, Product Manager, trust and safety pipeline at Gumtree Australia

FAQ

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What is Customer Experience?

Customer experience is a customers perception and feelings towards the interactions they have with your organisation which can include navigating the website to talking to customer services.

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What are the benefits of Customer Experience?

Good customer experience increases customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, better word-of-mouth, positive reviews and recommendations.

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What is the difference between customer service and customer experience?

Customer service is one part of the customer experience. Customer services refers to specific touchpoints within the experience and customer experience is the overall customer perception of the organisation from those touchpoint interactions.

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How can good customer experience be achieved?

Put simply, good customer experience can be achieved by talking to customers, listening to their responses and actioning their feedback.

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What is service design?

Service design improves the experiences of both the user and employee by designing, aligning, and optimizing an organization’s operations to better support customer journeys. (online)

Book a call to transform your customer service experience!

Access simple easy-to-action steps that build customer focus into your business

GET IN TOUCH

Delivering phenomenal outcomes


“Working with Proto was a leap of faith, but they have become a major strategic partner in our CX evolution. The work they've developed and the way we've been able to embed it in the organisation has been absolutely phenomenal, and we're getting the outcomes we want.”

Felicity Clark
Felicity Clark Customer Experience Manager

Creating empathy to deliver outstanding results


“Proto were a pleasure to work with. They were adaptive and responsive, and developed a deep empathy for both the client and their customers. The quality of their products and services was outstanding.”

Michael Storey
Michael Storey Manager of Customer Research and Strategy at Sydney Water

Halving your customer churn


“Without the customer experience insights from the research program, we would not have been able to identify the acquisition issues that we had. Changes to the customer interactions that led up to financial protection have reduced the outflow rates by 50%.”

Felicity Rowcliff Dean
Felicity Rowcliff Dean Customer Centred Design Manager

Take your NPS score to the next level


“From an NPS perspective, I have gone Spinal Tap on you guys and gone to 11. I still think the work you did with us, the way you went about it and the deliverables amounted to one of the best pieces of consulting advice I've ever commissioned.”

Matthew Liebmann
Matthew Liebmann Former Chief Operating Officer

Enabling customer-centric design


“Over the last 18 months, we've constantly referred to the work Proto did for us when designing and developing all the improvements to the app we're making. We've found their work to be highly valuable and has resulted in significant improvements to the MyOptus App that, without their insight wouldn't have been possible.”

Lucy Turner
Lucy Turner CX Design Launch Manager

Exceptional prototyping


“The outcome of the prototyping has been exceptional and we continue to use the knowledge and expertise that Proto shared with us during their engagement. The icing on the cake for me was that Proto captured all of the insights from the customer workshops into an organisational asset that we now use as an integral part of our toolkit for training and briefing new team members.”

Sharon Nanetti
Sharon Nanetti Optimal Care Program Director

Prioritising what matters


“Proto's in-depth customer research helped us to uncover underlying customer needs that wouldn't have been possible without an 'outside-in' approach. The team identified the core customer problems and provided actionable insights that enabled us to remove key areas of customer friction and frustration and redesign a credit card experience like no other.”

Christian Johansson
Christian Johansson Head of Marketing, Customer Finance

Achieving a 20 point increase in NPS


“I have worked with Damian and the team at Proto for several years. In this time, they have worked collaboratively with us to build a roadmap of strategic 'outside-in' initiatives that ultimately resulted in a 20 point increase in NPS. They imparted a great deal of CX knowledge, approaches and tools that have been invaluable to the team and the business.”

Amanda O'Donnell
Amanda O'Donnell Head of Customer Experience

Insight driven, customer centric ideas


“Proto revealed and captured a ton of insights, putting Gumtree in a position where we can take our experience from good to great!”

Coen Horrevoets
Coen Horrevoets Head of Product

Award-winning customer experiences


“We won the AFR Smart Investor SMILES award for Best Online Broker. This award is based on customer voting and I believe this was as a result of a clearer focus on our existing clients which you helped us to understand.”

Arni Selvarajah
Arnie Selvarajah Chief Executive Officer

Design that reduces cost to serve


“The Proto team demonstrated flexibility in their approach which made such a refreshing change. They took the time to coach and mentor each of us in a highly creative and energetic environment. Furthernore, they helped us exceed our customer satisfaction targets, all whilst stripping out in excess of 20% of our service costs in under 12 months. Proto helped us to stay focussed on the customer which enabled us to win in the market.”

Matthew Anderson
Matthew Anderson Chief Operating Officer

Service innovation at scale


“We worked with Proto on an exciting & unprecedented challenge at Optus, to design the customer experience of the future. Damian & the team had high energy & together we operated as 'one team'. Proto worked hand in hand with us to bring the internal team up to speed, & also brought in global experts to work with us to take our deliverables to another level of quality & innovation.”

Dan Sunderland
Dan Sunderland Director of Customer Experience Strategy and Planning

Actionable Customer Strategies


“Proto developed a membership strategy that addressed points of friction along our members journey, identified opportunities to improve and clarified the types of engagement that our members needed at the different stages in their career. We were impressed with the depth of insight that Proto were able to bring to the project - as well as the energy and ideas that they helped to generate.”

Sarah Thompson
Sarah Prescott-Thompson General Manager Shared Services

A partnership for CX


“Working with Proto was very much a partnership. We worked hand-in-hand to put CX on the map within the organisation. The team are flexible, trustworthy and do what it takes to achieve the best outcome. If you’re looking for a quality agency, providing quality data and insights – Proto are your guys. We received over 90 initiatives from the project of which 79% have now been implemented and we are seeing the benefits flow through!”

Customer Experience Specialist

Unique Product Innovation


“Proto integrated into multiple simultaneous projects to ensure we achieved the best outcome. They brought real clarity around customer needs, the fundamental elements of our value proposition and provided a clear roadmap of where we're trying to get to. This allowed us to differentiate beyond the traditional proposition. As a result, one customer-informed initiative we developed was loanScore™. This unique innovation helps customers see how good their home loan is and evaluate their options for a better deal.”

Anthony Justice
Anthony Jusitce CEO